Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight mentioned (again) the impact of cell phone bias in presidential polls. Cell phone bias was a known issue in 2010 according to a Pew study, and in 2008 (another Pew study linked here) and even in 2004 where pollster Jim Zogby identified some bias among young voters.

When we started Votifi we knew that the problem of Cell Phone bias is only going to get worse and that many polling companies and campaigns will have trouble absorbing the cost of calling cell phones. Data that is being used to develop important strategies and reported in the news will be skewed. We’re trying to come up with a better way to understand audience insights in a mobile and social world.

The clincher from Nate:

But if Mr. Obama over-performs the polling averages on Nov. 6, we’ll have to reconsider things for 2014 and 2016, by which time number of Americans who rely solely on cellphones may have grown to almost half of the population.

It’s very unlikely that polling in 2016 will look like it does today, when we’ll all have iPhone 8s and probably have computer chips embedded under our skin or in our brains.

Read Nate Silver’s  full article here. Then register for Votifi here.